All hail Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, king of the bots

Mark Zuckerberg was once the boy king of Silicon Valley. Now he wants to be the bot king of Silicon Valley.Zuckerberg, who famously started Facebook in his dorm as a cherub-faced sophomore at Harvard, has said repeatedly that it's his mission to connect every person on the planet. Now we know that doesn't just mean connecting people to other people. It also means connecting them to...robots.But not like you might think. We're not talking about physical robots roaming Tatooine. Instead, Zuckerberg is betting on chatbots, software powered by artificial intelligence that can perform simple tasks: compose an email, book travel plans or figure out why your cable just went out. Send a text to a chatbot in a messaging app, and the software automatically jumps into gear to serve you...

At least that's the takeaway from the keynote Tuesday in San Francisco during F8, Facebook's software conference that drew 2,000 developers this year.The rise of bots underscores just how important AI is to the future of tech -- and how much Facebook needs to keep reinventing itself to keep its 1.6 billion users engaged. Chatbots, which have been around for decades, are the first step into a world where robots can help with everything from the mundane to major. Think everything from adding an appointment to your calendar to open heart surgery. Silicon Valley's biggest companies, including Google and Microsoft, have invested heavily in AI...